The 2009 Oscars

- Hugh Jackman seemed to have realized that he could never match up to the show's previous hosts like Crystal, Stewart, Goldberg, Martin and Letterman when it came to humor. So he cut down on the jokes and turned to song & dance. The first number did give the show a jumpstart since it came as a complete surprise. But the other numbers in the middle of the show were kinda boring. Jackman was onstage for such a short time that he seemed completely redundant though.

- With Jackman's monologues being rather low on jokes(his quip about Oscars going to actors with range was probably the best), it was up to some of the presenters to make us laugh. Jack Black, Steve Martin and Whoopi Goldberg were - quite obviously - the most successful at that.

- The usual format of 2 presenters reading out the nominations was changed for the Supporting Actor/Actress and Best Actor/Actress awards as five previous winners read out the nominations before one of them declared the winner. It made the process a bit longer but it did help all those who were nominated be in the spotlight for a bit longer than usual and that was nice. De Niro's speech nominating Sean Penn was the best and was both funny and classy.

- Can't say the same thing about the award recipients. There were no really memorable, fascinating or witty acceptance speeches and most of the speeches were little more than a shopping list of thank yous. So the few interesting moments - like the whistle from Kate Winslet's dad in the audience or the disappearing-coin magic trick by the winner of the Best Documentary - stood out just by not being run-of-the-mill.

- The special feature this time was a montage of clips from all films belonging to a particular genre. Wasn't particularly interesting.

- It was definitely Slumdog Millionaire's night as it scooped up most of the awards it was nominated for. Our first goosebump moment came as Resul Pookutty collected the Oscar for Sound Mixing for the film. He gave a really good speech(he was the only one to thank his teachers, I think) and though he was understandably excited, he definitely seemed genuine.

- Having been looking forward anxiously to Rahman's live performance, the performance of the nominated scores by the official orchestra came as a disappointment since I took it as a sign that his performance had been cancelled. I soon realized that it was premature but before that came the moment we were all waiting for as ARR's name was announced as winner for Best Score. Calm and composed as always, he made our night with a simple line - Ellappugazhum Iraivanukke!

- He then came on stage to perform both his nominated songs - O Saaya... and Jai Ho.... The rousing and totally exhilarating Jai Ho... left us with little doubt that it would win the Oscar and that came true just a couple of minutes later as he came back onstage to accept the statue for Best Song. It was another short, simple but memorable speech about choosing love over hate and where that had landed him.

- Slumdog Millionaire continues racking up awards, including the two big ones - Best Director for Danny Boyle and Best Picture. It was nice seeing the whole gang up onstage for the latter award and even nicer seeing Anil Kapoor act much more restrained than he did at the Golden Globes!

Jai Ho!